Bev Trayner, David Wilcox and others have been developing social reporting as a new way of integrating the use of social media into events. The idea is not only to capture and publish moments of the event, but to stimulate different types of conversation. It has an overall design that includes short cycles of planning and action in collaboration with workshop organisers and participants.
Greater reach
The aim of social reporting is to help event organisers to think about how to better reach people “in the room” as well as the people who are not there. It has grown in response to two important trends: one is the explosion of free online tools that open up communication and the publishing of information of different types (including text, photographs and video recordings) in different ways and to different types of people.
Informal conversations
A second trend that has stimulated interest in social reporting is the growing recognition that many insights and learning that happen at face-to-face events take place during informal conversations or impromptu activities between participants and not necessarily in the formal presentations or sessions given by experts.
Community ownership
Social reporting does not aim to produce the kind of formal account of an event that can be done by a video team, official scribes or photographers. It is not an official webpage publishing the event outcomes. Rather, social reporting tries to reach out to community members to help them take ownership of communication tools and to make use of them in ways that make sense for them and for their purposes.
More and diverse voices
Through stimulating and capturing improvisational conversations social reporting is a way of bringing more voices to the table and of surfacing some of the stories that help give context to the event. It uses a mix of journalism, facilitation and social media to help people develop conversations and stories for collaboration and for celebration. It aims to promote transparency, accountability and openness from within the community, never reporting on the community.
About social reporting
Bev Trayner, David Wilcox and others have been developing social reporting as a new way of integrating the use of social media into events. The idea is not only to capture and publish moments of the event, but to stimulate different types of conversation. It has an overall design that includes short cycles of planning and action in collaboration with workshop organisers and participants.
Greater reach
The aim of social reporting is to help event organisers to think about how to better reach people “in the room” as well as the people who are not there. It has grown in response to two important trends: one is the explosion of free online tools that open up communication and the publishing of information of different types (including text, photographs and video recordings) in different ways and to different types of people.
Informal conversations
A second trend that has stimulated interest in social reporting is the growing recognition that many insights and learning that happen at face-to-face events take place during informal conversations or impromptu activities between participants and not necessarily in the formal presentations or sessions given by experts.
Community ownership
Social reporting does not aim to produce the kind of formal account of an event that can be done by a video team, official scribes or photographers. It is not an official webpage publishing the event outcomes. Rather, social reporting tries to reach out to community members to help them take ownership of communication tools and to make use of them in ways that make sense for them and for their purposes.
More and diverse voices
Through stimulating and capturing improvisational conversations social reporting is a way of bringing more voices to the table and of surfacing some of the stories that help give context to the event. It uses a mix of journalism, facilitation and social media to help people develop conversations and stories for collaboration and for celebration. It aims to promote transparency, accountability and openness from within the community, never reporting on the community.
Also see:
About the social reporting document
Landscapes of Practices workshop
Workshop tool preparation
What happened?
Reflections and lessons
Closing thoughts